LibGuides: IDEAA Library Book Club: Book Club Selection

Book Club Selection - October 2025

All About Love by Bell Hooks

Bell Hooks offers the reader a refreshingly positive insight into what it means to love. In our increasingly cynical culture it is difficult to remember the value of loving each other. She discusses the family as the place where we learn to love and persuades us to put ourselves into our communities. She warns of the emptiness of our consumer culture. Our spiritual emptiness can only be remedied by becoming unafraid to love. Bell Hooks makes this often difficult emotion more understandable and approachable by dissolving the subject into clear down-to-earth language; an argument that it may in fact be easier to love than to be selfish.

Source: Gale Books and Authors

All About Love

Subject(s):

Culture, Love, Romances (Fiction), Sexual behavior

Time Period:

21st century, 2000s (Decade)

Expert Picks:

African Americans into the Millennium: 55 Books for Black History Month and Beyond

Attribution:

All about Love: New Visions (Nonfiction work) (2000). (2021). In What Do I Read Next? Online. Gale. (Reprinted from n.d.) https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/M1300100371/BNA?u=victorvcl&sid=bookmark-BNA&xid=3282d730

All About Love. (Book reviews: love everybody right now).
Review of All About Love, by bell hooks

One of the feminist movement's most prolific writers, bell hooks, has now touched the core of civil rights struggles. Her new book, All About Love, suggests that the experience of hatred found in oppressive relationships can be resolved in the experience of love. All About Love teaches us how to find and keep love in a culture full of hatred.
Library Journal(Vol. 125, Issue 5) by Ann Burns
hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. Morrow. 2000. c.240p. ISBN 0-688-16844-2. $22. PSYCH

This is a serious look at love from the author of Remembered Rapture. It is a theme hooks (English, CUNY) has visited a few times before. In Killing Rage, she called for a "beloved community in which loving ties of care and knowing bind us together in our differences," she struggled to belong in Bone Black, and in Wounds of Passion she continued her quest for love and acceptance. In these essays, she offers myriad ways in which to think about love, beginning with a look at childhood (where we first learn about this emotion), with a focus on how parents abuse and neglect their children. She then turns her attention to lying, pointing out that men lie to get "power," while women do so to pretend "powerlessness." In addition, she advises us to accept ourselves, practice spirituality, seek romantic relationships, and learn to love life. Enlightening and valuable, hooks's complex ideas and the book's serious tone make this a strong addition to academic and large public libraries.

--Ann Burns, "Library Journal"
Publishers Weekly Published: Nov. 29, 1999
BELL HOOKS. Morrow, $22 (240p) ISBN 0-688-16844-2

Taking on yet another popular topic in her role as cultural critic, hooks blends the personal and the psychological with the philosophical in her latest book--a thoughtful hut frequently familiar examination of love American style. A distinguished professor of English at City College in New York City, she explains her sense of urgency about confronting a subject that countless writers have analyzed: "I feel our nation's turning away from love as intensely as I felt love's abandonment in my girlhood. Turning away, we risk moving in a wilderness of spirit so intense we may never find our way home again." With an engaging narrative style, hooks presents a series of possible ways to reverse what she sees as the emotional and cultural fallout caused by flawed visions of love largely defined by men who have been socialized to distrust its value and power. She proposes a transformative love based on affection, respect, recognition, commitment, trust and care, rather than the customary forms stemming from gender stereotypes, domination, control, ego and aggression. However, many of her insights about self-love, forgiveness, compassion and openness have been explored in greater depth by the legion of writers hooks quotes liberally throughout the book, such as John Bradshaw, Lucia Hodgson, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton and M. Scott Peck, among others. Still, every page offers useful nuggets of wisdom to aid the reader in overcoming the fears of total intimacy and of loss. Although the chapter on angels comes across as filler, hooks's view of amour is ultimately a pleasing, upbeat alternative to the slew of books that proclaim the demise of love in our cynical time. (Jan.)

All About Love Discussion Guide

Overview

For those confounded and intrigued by the nature of love, All About Love unravels its meaning and explores the ways in which it is most often undervalued, ignored, and misunderstood. With unwavering insight, clarity, and candor, bell hooks offers radical new visions of love and its force in our lives. Exploring love in its many incarnations, cultural critic and feminist theorist bell hooks challenges some of our most deeply held assumptions and reveals the potential of a life-changing reassessment of love. All About Love reveals the ways in which love can transform us both personally and culturally, how -- through love -- we possess the power to end conflicts within ourselves and within our communities. Hooks asserts that it is never too late to return to love, to speak with our hearts. The power of such transformation resides within each of us.

Discussion Questions

1. In the preface, hooks writes, "love returns us to the promise of everlasting life. When we love we can let our hearts speak" (p. xi). What does this mean?

2. hooks describes the inspiration and solace she finds in graffiti art declaring, "The search for love continues even in the face of great odds" (p. xv). Where have you found similar signs that have restored your faith in love?

3. Historically, how have the demands of love for women been different from those for men? How have they differed for adults and children? What does hooks suggest about these distinctions?

4. Discuss the way in which hooks uses her personal experience throughout this book. How does her personal experience enhance her assertions? Which vignette do you find particularly meaningful?

5. hooks describes the allure of lying in relation to the allure of power. What are the lies you tell to feel powerful? How do our concepts of power -- born from the patriarchal culture we inhabit -- keep us from love? What role does greed play and where does it come from?

6. hooks probes the gap between the values many people "claim to hold and their willingness to do the work of connecting thought and action, theory and practice" (p. 90). How does our culture reward those who nurture this gap? What changes would we have to make in society to nurture and inspire the closing of this gap?

7. If we must sacrifice "our old selves in order to be changed by love" (p. 188), what is it that we're giving up?

8. Although she warns against attempting to return to the past rather than forging ahead, hooks advocates repairing and restoring family bonds. Why is this an important goal? How do these bonds enable us to live with love in all areas of our lives?

9. What are the political ramifications of hooks's visions of love? Is love a political issue?

10. Look over the chapter titles in All About Love. If you were to add a chapter, what would it be?

11. Why do we fear love? Are we more afraid of surrendering ourselves to love or of living without love? What sacrifices does love require? What relief and salve can love offer? Is it possible to be too damaged, too wounded to love?

12. How has All About Love enhanced, contradicted, challenged, altered your vision of love?

13. Do you have a favorite passage? If so, what and why?

About the Author (Bell Hooks 1952-2021)

Bell Hooks is a cultural critic, feminist theorist, and writer. Celebrated as one of our nation's leading public intellectual by The Atlantic Monthly, as well as one of Utne Reader's 100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life, she is a charismatic speaker who divides her time among teaching, writing, and lecturing around the world. Previously a professor in the English departments at Yale University and Oberlin College, hooks is now a Distinguished Professor of English at City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of more than seventeen books, including All About Love: New Visions; Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work; Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life; Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood; Killing Rage: Ending Racism; Art on My Mind: Visual Politics; and Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. She lives in New York City.

-From Reading Group Guides (Link to discussion questions)

All About Love Chapter Contents

Preface

Introduction. Grace : touched by love

Clarity : give love words

Justice : childhood love lessons

Honesty : be true to love

Commitment : let love be love in me

Spirituality : divine love

Values : living by a love ethnic

Greed : simply love

Community : loving communion

Mutuality : the heart of love

Romance : sweet love

Loss : loving into life and death

Healing : redemptive love

Destiny : when angels speak of love.

Book Club Selection - November 2025

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau"In The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Moreno-Garcia introduces Carlota as Dr. Moreau's twenty-year-old daughter in the novel's present day and expands the point of view of Montgomery, the man hired when Carlota was fourteen to oversee Moreau's property in the Yucatán and the animal-human hybrids he had created. Six years into the job, several factors threaten to ruin all of Dr. Moreau's work. The political upheaval occurring throughout Mexico lands close to home when Carlota becomes romantically involved with Eduardo, the son of Dr. Moreau's boss, and Dr. Moreau's hybrids are put in danger. Through it all, Carlota starts to question the morality of her father's experiments, as his creations are forced to live in great pain. As the tension builds and ultimately boils over, the ending to The Daughter of Doctor Moreau “will linger long in readers’ minds,” according to a Publishers Weekly contributor.

Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

Subject(s):

Culture, Colonialism, Family relationships, Science fiction, Gender

Time Period:

19th century (fictional setting inspired by late 1800s), Published 21st century (2022)

Expert Picks:

Recommended in speculative fiction and feminist reimagine lists; notable in Latinx Science Fiction & Fantasy Spotlights and Modern Gothic Reads

Attribution:

Moreno-Garcia, S. (2022). The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. New York: Del Rey.

Gale Books and Authors

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau
Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Del Rey, $28 (320p) ISBN 978-0-593-35533-6

In this thorny riff on The Island of Doctor Moreau, bestseller Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic) interweaves several threads in 19th-century Mexico. Carlota, the naive daughter of a mad scientist bent on creating a race of hybrid animal-humans in remote Yaxaktun, strains against the boundaries of her life as she searches for love and connection beyond the world her father has engineered to contain her; Montgomery, a caretaker who self-medicates with alcohol in order to cope with a tragic past, pines for Carlota even as she explores her attraction to Eduardo, the spoiled aristocratic son of her father's benefactor; and the hybrid creatures created by the eponymous doctor struggle to maintain their autonomy and personhood as the forces surrounding them attempt to subjugate their wills for their own ends. Moreno-Garcia's worldbuilding chops are on display as she creates a distinct, vibrant backdrop to her audacious retelling. The prose, however, exhibits a cold remove that occasionally makes it difficult to remain invested in the action, and though the characters' arcs reach satisfying conclusions, wonky pacing makes the work of reaching them a challenge. The third act rights the ship, however, with an ending that will linger long in readers' minds. Fans of cerebral, atmospheric historical horror won't want to miss this. Agent: Eddie Schneider, JA Bberwocky Literary. (July)
A matter of perspective: New takes on "Rapunzel" and The Island of Doctor Moreau pull readers into worlds both familiar and strange.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

Silvia Moreno-Garcia's The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (Del Rey, $28, 9780593355336) starts in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula in the 19th century, as the titular doctor is looking for an assistant. He hires Montgomery Laughton, an Englishman with alcoholism and a mountain of debt. Montgomery helps the doctor create human-animal hybrids, which are destined to work the plantations of Dr. Moreau's wealthy benefactor.

Carlota Moreau, the doctor's daughter, leads a carefree life on the estate, with hybrid companions and her studies to keep her company. The only thing marring her life is a lingering childhood illness that requires her to have weekly injections of one of her father's mysterious serums. When the handsome son of Dr. Moreau's benefactor, Eduardo Lizalde, unexpectedly visits, the estate is thrown into total disarray as the Moreaus' secrets are pulled slowly into the light.
Moreno-Garcia, Silvia: THE DAUGHTER OF DOCTOR MOREAU
A new spin on the H.G. Wells classic from the genre-hopping Mexican Canadian novelist.

Young 19th-century woman Carlota Moreau has spent her whole life in Yaxaktun, a ranch in northern Yucat�n, Mexico, and that's just fine with her: "I feel as if Yaxaktun is a beautiful dream and I wish to dream it forever," she tells a visitor to the isolated property. She lives there with her beloved father, Dr. Moreau, whom she considers "the sun in the sky, lighting her days." They're not the only ones on the ranch, however--it's populated by Dr. Moreau's "hybrids," part human and part animal, the results of the doctor's bizarre experiments. Looming over everything is Hernando Lizalde, Dr. Moreau's patron, who bankrolls the doctor's laboratory in hopes that he'll eventually create hybrids that are fit to work on his haciendas, but he seldom visits the ranch. On one of those visits, he brings along Montgomery, a self-loathing, hard-drinking English hunter whom Dr. Moreau hopes to hire as a mayordomo, an overseer of the property and its hybrids. Montgomery takes the job, and six years later things begin to fall apart: Hernando loses patience with the doctor's slow pace, and his son, Eduardo, visits the ranch and falls for Carlota; the results of their relationship threaten to destroy everything Dr. Moreau has worked for. Meanwhile, Carlota begins to question her adored father's experiments; the doctor acknowledges the creatures suffer greatly but insists that "pain must be endured, for without it there'd be no sweetness." Moreno-Garcia's novel starts a little slowly, but there's a reason for that--the setup is crucial to the book's action-packed second half, and the payoff is worth it. Moreno-Garcia's previous work has spanned genres--horror in Mexican Gothic (2020), noir in Velvet Was the Night (2021)--and in this volume, she deftly combines fantasy, adventure, and even romance; the result is hard to classify but definitely a lot of fun. This isn't the first book to riff on H.G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), but it's definitely one of the better ones.

A fun literary remix.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau Book Club Kit
Book Club Kit includes:
-Letter from the author
-Discussion guide questions
-Glossary
-Map
-Treasure Hunt (Trivia)
-Treasure Hunt answers
-Afterward
-Artwork